Fan fun in Venice!

Just a few customer appreciation photos showing Irene with her Fragonard fan - and some friends, at the Carnival of Venice in February...

Belt buckle

I have been somewhat obsessed with cut steel jewellery and -buckles lately and typical late Georgian belt buckles in particular. Buckles with miniature paintings are adorable indeed, but I find the ones with Wedgwood plaques lovelier still...

"Cupid unmasked".

Unfortunately, these specimens are hard to come by for most reenactors, especially those who don't have hundreds or thousands of £/$ to spend on the real thing.
So, I've wanted to make one by myself for a while, with whatever suitable materials that I could find. I didn't quite think the construction through to start with, I just started with buying a porcelain blank for the decorative "medallion".... The idea was that the result was going to look a bit like this rather famous example below, from the Kyoto costume institute...

So I painted the blank in watercolour, using a cute design from a fan leaf (below), and sealed the painting with spray lacquer. 

Commissioning a silver (or steel!) setting from a gold smith was, of course, out of the question for both practical and economical reasons. I went around and looked for suitable belt blanks and oval pieces of metal that could be used, to no avail.

The idea was to glue the porcelain blank onto the metal piece and then glue cut-steel-looking rivets or beads around the edges. Then the buckle slides, which were to be made out of thick metal wire and bended to shape, could be soldered to the surface on the backside. Or something.

That didn't work, I only found sheets of very thin metal with extremely sharp edges. And it rusted as well! 

But despite all that, I still managed to make a rather decent looking buckle...

First, I made an oval "setting" in cernit clay (sculpey) and baked it. Then the porcelain blank was stuck to the surface with super glue. The "cut steel" beads of faceted glass were threaded onto a very thin metal wire and glued around the edges. Holes were drilled on the backside and then I glued the bended pieces of metal wire into the holes. And voila!

If you intend to make one for yourself, however, make sure that the metal pieces are of the same length and also that the holes are correctly placed, otherwise the buckle will hang askew on the belt/sash.

Well, now I'm only looking for an occasion to wear it... :-)

Shepherdess fan

I just managed to finish yet another delightful, glittering little thing in late 1780s-1790s style (available for purchase on Etsy, as usual).

I have used a print in the vignette yet again... It's not that I'm lazy, but they used printed leaves a lot back in the days and it does save time for me. Still, this fan ended up as quite expensive because of all the work I put into the sticks, and the fabric covering on the reverse side of the leaf etc.etc.

 Oh yes, the Chinese bamboo sticks turned out to be a challenge... as is so often the case. I used "natural" (unpainted) ones this time, and in order to make them look a *little* more like real 18th century sticks I sawed off the annoying extra 2 cms of obviously-modern-Chinese fan-stick-length below the pivot... and sanded it to shape. I also had to take the whole thing apart to be able to paint the sticks in ivory colour - and put the sticks together again and replace the pivot, of course.

I do wonder why those sticks are never available in white. They are always black, unpainted or brown. Oh well...

Mint green music

All right, this is my latest fan... A print by Bartolozzi called "Music" is decoupaged onto a paper leaf in the delightful colour scheme of mint green, silver and black.

 Oh yes, it's another one of those decoupage fans... I still love lavish silk fans littered with sequins and embroidery et cetera, but unfortunately, making them is just too time consuming and unprofitable.

As a lover of music and most shades of green and silver (and black!), I might have kept it, but since I know that I can always make myself a new fan, I usually end up selling most of them off. So, the fan is available on Etsy together with a mended "Beauty&Love" from my last blog post.

The fragility of Beauty

Yesterday I finished a new lovely fan (featuring an engraving* by Bartolozzi after Cipriani called "The triumph of Beauty and Love") and was just about to take some photos and put it up for sale on Etsy...

And what happened?!

SNAP!!

After opening the thing, very carefully, for the third time or so...

Well, at least it made me gather strength enough to update my blog after all those months of inactivity. At least no one had the misfortune of buying it before it broke. And at least I know that I should NEVER ever use recycled plastic sticks again, since plastic has a sad tendency to become more fragile with age. Why then did I use these sticks in the first place? They were a gift, and they could pass for 18th century and tortoiseshell at a quick glance, even though they are too small for the period (about 23 cms spanning a mere 43 cms) and have that annoying pseudo-19th-centuryish U-shaped loop attached to the pivot (which can be removed anyway).

Now what should I do: mend it and keep it as a disposable fan or just throw the darn thing away? Or is anyone mad enough to buy it for less than half the intended price of $227 = $75?

...

*A printed COPY of the engraving of course ;-)

Mourning attire & winning a costume contest

For obvious reasons, mourning fans are probably not on top of anyone's wish list, but I have still missed a matching fan to go with my black polonaise... Halloween was the perfect excuse to finally make that fan - and wear the dress again, anyway.  (Has it been five weeks already? I guess I need to update more often... Oh well.) The fan was inspired by an original found somewhere on the net (probably Ebay). Interestingly, it sports one of the most simplistic and naïve paintings that I've ever seen on an 18th century fan. Because of this, it was also unusually quick and easy to copy.

 The polonaise mentioned was originally made to be worn on stage when I was a backing operatic-style vocalist in a band quite long ago, which is why it might not be completely historically accurate...  In any case, on 18th century events I have mostly been wearing it on the yearly memorial service for king Gustaf III in Riddarholmen church in Stockholm, and on some masquerade balls...

I may look bored, but I'm supposed to be a vampire, you know...

Of course it's a rather heavy thing to wear on a night out, but it's still perfect for Halloween. Especially if you're going to a party with a costume contest, which I did on this particular night. And guess what - I actually won the whole thing! :-)
Not only that, my zombie friend Lena placed herself as number three in the contest as well. Sadly, however, I didn't manage to get better photos from the occasion than these...

My zombie friend and I

An 18th century emergency kit

Dreams and downright nightmares always tend to follow specific, recurrent themes, and judging from my own and my friend's personal experiences, there seem to be at least two rather similar ones that are common among reenactors.

"Oh no, how am I supposed to get into the car now?!"

Number one is "delayed for the ball".

You are on your way to the event of the year, and after the usual, slow dressing procedure you are about to leave, looking great in your best toilette. Or so you thought, for you have somehow managed to forget to do your hair... your poor unkempt tresses are hanging about your face as on a particularly shaggy sheep dog. And not only that – now that you know that you will be delayed by at least one hour, the clock shows that the ball is just about to start...! And you were positively sure that you had plenty of time... Further dressing incidents, delays and agonies usually follow, and you never manage to get to your destination...

Number two is ”the magically disappearing clothing articles”.

Curiously, a friend of mine who has only been to one 18^th century ball in her whole life so far, had the following dream several days before the event:

She was at the ball wearing her dress, looking and feeling perfectly all right. When all of a sudden, she discovered that her stays had magically disappeared, leaving her with the bulky look of a Butterick costume from hell. Then she looked down on her feet, and realised with horror that her shoes were gone and that she was walking around in stocking feet – modern sports socks too! - under her fancy skirts...

Those dreams may of course have a much deeper meaning than mere fear of missing a party or fear of looking and feeling more or less awkward and historically incorrect. Still, forgetting basic garments, accessories and details while packing before attending an event IS a nightmarish possibility even in waking life - as every reenactor knows.

"I know I must have forgotten something..."

Due to problems of a logistic nature, I haven't been reenacting a lot lately (which you probably have noticed from my virtually nonexistent blog posts and pictures on the subject.) Something which of course has made me more afraid of forgetting something vital next time... So, I have taken the time to write a list on what should be in every lady's ”18^th century emergency kit”:

1. Pins, needles, safety pins (and maybe even some sewing thread!)
   Sooner or later something will fall off your dress: some trimmings, your stomacher, and if none of that happens, someone will step on your train and rip your dress apart...
2. Some yards of extra ribbons for corsets and lacings.
   Oh yes, it happened to me once when I was about to put on my green, front laced française... the ribbon broke (luckily I was able to tie it together and still get it through the lacing holes).
3. Hairpins, hairpins and tons of hairpins. 
   Because of the simple fact that late 18th century fashion in particular demands no less of your hair/wig and headwear than to defy the laws of gravity...
4. A small bottle of hairspray.
   Say no more.
5. Some yards of extra ribbons for the hair (to bind up and conceal mistakes and potentially missing hairpieces, of course).
6. Mouches/beauty patches (and maybe some mastix glue). In case your makeup rubs off leaving glowing red patches here and there... and offering a new aquintance a mouche might be the start of a beautiful friendship too, who knows? ;-)
7. A small set of cards, playing cards, tarot/whatever... a great way to pass time on more quiet occasions. 
   
   

   

   My personal kit.

   So, what do you people keep in your "emergency kits"? And has any of those nightmares about missing pieces ever really come true for anyone of you? As far as I can remember, it has only ever happened to my hair (and several times too!), but that's stuff for a later article...